This essential “how not to” guide explains how to act and what to say in the presence of police to minimize the chances of being arrested and to avoid add-on charges—which can often lead to permanent disqualification from jobs, financing, and education. Citizens can learn how to avoid arrest both on the street and when pulled over in a vehicle and are alerted to basic tricks cops use to get people to incriminate themselves. Sprinkled with absurdity and humor, this urgent, eye-opening book is a guide to criminal justice for all Americans.
Arrest-Proof Yourself
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—Carson has been both a cop and a criminal defense attorney. Here, he puts his years of experience into a "how-not-to" book. He feels that most people who get arrested aren't the worst criminals; they are just the most "clueless"—small-time offenders who make bad decisions and end up in what he calls the "electronic plantation." Now that computers make it ever so easy to track people, getting arrested, even if you're not ultimately convicted, can and will come back to haunt you. Carson has three golden rules: "If cops can't see you, they can't arrest you," "Keep your dope at home," and "Give cops your name and basic info, then shut the f*@# up!" While the book read straight through may seem a little repetitive, it ultimately does come back to one of these three rules, which are imparted with examples and behavior charts. Carson uses a blunt style to make these points, but it's a style that is sure to hit home with his target audience—the underclass. And he does make it plain that while there are many middle-class and white-collar criminals, the police tend to focus their patrols in bad neighborhoods. Those most likely to be in situations where they or those they know might get arrested will get the most out of this book, but even readers in more lofty areas with an interest in law enforcement could find much to discuss.—Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Dale C. Carson was a FBI field agent for 15 years and a Miami police officer for 8 years, where he set Florida records for felony arrests. He is currently a criminal defense attorney. Wes Denham has written newspaper columns and edited trade journals.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
242 of 251 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I almost cannot believe this book was written by a cop. If Hunter S. Thompson were not dead before the publication date, I would swear this was ghost-written. When he advises the reader to consider SOILING his or her PANTS to avoid being taken into custody, I can't vouch for the quality of the advice, but I have to admire the author's balls. Other bits of advice are undoubtably real gems; when the author recommends to always ask the cop for a Notice to Appear in court (or "NOA" - this is to be attempted before resorting to the pant-pooping) he is dispensing uncommon practical wisdom. His discussion of racial profiling, and direct advice to young black and hispanic men, is jaw-droppingly frank. Not unlike Thucydides, the author says, in effect: "Let us have no talk of just and unjust."
The bulk of this book is not unlike the various "Know Your Rights" resources published by groups like the ACLU, but it is vastly better. Those other resources give sound advice in the form of "rules," but it is abstracted from 4th and 5th Amendment case law. The truth is that the justice system exists primarily in the cracks between the laws - in the form of police and prosecutorial discretion. The subjective aspects of an encounter with the police - namely police incentives and psychology - are at least as important to your outcome as the positive law is. Any student of the Supreme Court can tell you what to do in a police encounter (e.g. "shut up"), but without any understanding of why you are doing it, it may be VERY difficult advice to follow.
Following the old adage "know your enemy in order to defeat him," the author shows you what a police encounter looks like from the cop's perspective. Police, the author emphasizes, are NOT "just people" - they are "Great White sharks" (his words) trained to churn as many arrests and seizures as possible. But -like sharks- they share certain natural tendencies that make them predictable, (to a limited extent) manipulable, and (above all) avoidable.
Another way it differs from the ACLU brand of rights books and videos is in its urgency. The author argues that, in the electronic panopticon that is today's justice system, an arrest is effectively as damning as a conviction. Computer databases mean that today, not just your penal interests, but also your future employment and your credit can be ruined by an arrest. This is why you - the citizen - must read this book. Not even the best attorney can get you "un-arrested" - you must help yourself by staying free in the first place.
That said, I think the author overstates this point a bit. The class of the offense and your age at the time still matter a great deal. Not even the CIA can afford to exclude everyone with a blemish on their record. Moreover, the panopticon is not really all that efficient (yet). If your name is "Joe Smith," from "Los Angeles," your legibility to the system is still pretty minimal.
Carson limits his advice to those bits helpful to the "clueless" petty criminal - the people most likely to be arrested in a random police encounter. This book tells you only how to navigate what the law calls a "Terry" stop. He's not interested in helping dangerous and/or professional criminals - who are in any event much more likely to be arrested pursuant to a warrant of some sort. (If your house is going to be raided, get a book on prisons, because this won't be of much help.)
This brings us to the author's very interesting editorial thesis: namely, that economics keeps petty offenses criminal. On this account, simple possession of marijuana remains a criminal offense primarily because courts and cops need something to do while they are between rapists and murderers. Petty crime is the daily bread of the justice system. This is a very interesting hypothesis, and while it probably deserves a more scholarly treatment than it recieves here (any U of Chicago grad students in the room?), it seems to me intuitively correct. This beast must eat a steady diet of petty offenders so that it's still in shape when we really need it. But this obviously sucks for the petty offenders (who, when you think about it, are really doing a public service) and Carson is interested in teaching them how to avoid the beast's jaws.
Sadly, the few people who really need this book are unlikely to have the foresight to read it. But, if you are at risk of being arrested this book is for you. If you look weird, are a young male, belong to a racial minority group, travel on foot, drive after midnight, use illegal drugs, have a prior record, or have friends or family who do any of the above, this book is worth taking a look at. Also highly recommended for people who work in the CJ system (except cops, who know this stuff).
The bulk of this book is not unlike the various "Know Your Rights" resources published by groups like the ACLU, but it is vastly better. Those other resources give sound advice in the form of "rules," but it is abstracted from 4th and 5th Amendment case law. The truth is that the justice system exists primarily in the cracks between the laws - in the form of police and prosecutorial discretion. The subjective aspects of an encounter with the police - namely police incentives and psychology - are at least as important to your outcome as the positive law is. Any student of the Supreme Court can tell you what to do in a police encounter (e.g. "shut up"), but without any understanding of why you are doing it, it may be VERY difficult advice to follow.
Following the old adage "know your enemy in order to defeat him," the author shows you what a police encounter looks like from the cop's perspective. Police, the author emphasizes, are NOT "just people" - they are "Great White sharks" (his words) trained to churn as many arrests and seizures as possible. But -like sharks- they share certain natural tendencies that make them predictable, (to a limited extent) manipulable, and (above all) avoidable.
Another way it differs from the ACLU brand of rights books and videos is in its urgency. The author argues that, in the electronic panopticon that is today's justice system, an arrest is effectively as damning as a conviction. Computer databases mean that today, not just your penal interests, but also your future employment and your credit can be ruined by an arrest. This is why you - the citizen - must read this book. Not even the best attorney can get you "un-arrested" - you must help yourself by staying free in the first place.
That said, I think the author overstates this point a bit. The class of the offense and your age at the time still matter a great deal. Not even the CIA can afford to exclude everyone with a blemish on their record. Moreover, the panopticon is not really all that efficient (yet). If your name is "Joe Smith," from "Los Angeles," your legibility to the system is still pretty minimal.
Carson limits his advice to those bits helpful to the "clueless" petty criminal - the people most likely to be arrested in a random police encounter. This book tells you only how to navigate what the law calls a "Terry" stop. He's not interested in helping dangerous and/or professional criminals - who are in any event much more likely to be arrested pursuant to a warrant of some sort. (If your house is going to be raided, get a book on prisons, because this won't be of much help.)
This brings us to the author's very interesting editorial thesis: namely, that economics keeps petty offenses criminal. On this account, simple possession of marijuana remains a criminal offense primarily because courts and cops need something to do while they are between rapists and murderers. Petty crime is the daily bread of the justice system. This is a very interesting hypothesis, and while it probably deserves a more scholarly treatment than it recieves here (any U of Chicago grad students in the room?), it seems to me intuitively correct. This beast must eat a steady diet of petty offenders so that it's still in shape when we really need it. But this obviously sucks for the petty offenders (who, when you think about it, are really doing a public service) and Carson is interested in teaching them how to avoid the beast's jaws.
Sadly, the few people who really need this book are unlikely to have the foresight to read it. But, if you are at risk of being arrested this book is for you. If you look weird, are a young male, belong to a racial minority group, travel on foot, drive after midnight, use illegal drugs, have a prior record, or have friends or family who do any of the above, this book is worth taking a look at. Also highly recommended for people who work in the CJ system (except cops, who know this stuff).
122 of 128 people found the following review helpful
By John
Format:Paperback
This is a very good book about how not to get arrested. To summarize the main themes of the book, on how not to get arrested:
- Don't carry guns in your vehicle
- Don't have drugs in your vehicle
- Don't mouth off to cops (actually, shut up when around them)
- Never, ever touch a cop or physically invade his space, etc.
- If a cop sees you, just keep doing what you were doing before he saw you (i.e., the police look for people who change their behavior around the police suddenly).
The entire book is basically variations on those themes. His basic point is that the "clueless" get arrested, because they do one or more of the above. One main message of this book is "if they can't see you, they can't arrest you". Think about it. Who gets arrested ? The guy who is highly visible to police. The white collar criminal, operating behind closed doors is just not visible. The hurdle of a warrant to search a private home in the U.S. is massive. But the hurdle to stop and search a vehicle is not great at all. For that reason, the people who get arrested in the U.S. are people who do stupid stuff in their car (transport guns, transport drugs, get an attitude when stopped, physically touch the officer, etc.
- Don't carry guns in your vehicle
- Don't have drugs in your vehicle
- Don't mouth off to cops (actually, shut up when around them)
- Never, ever touch a cop or physically invade his space, etc.
- If a cop sees you, just keep doing what you were doing before he saw you (i.e., the police look for people who change their behavior around the police suddenly).
The entire book is basically variations on those themes. His basic point is that the "clueless" get arrested, because they do one or more of the above. One main message of this book is "if they can't see you, they can't arrest you". Think about it. Who gets arrested ? The guy who is highly visible to police. The white collar criminal, operating behind closed doors is just not visible. The hurdle of a warrant to search a private home in the U.S. is massive. But the hurdle to stop and search a vehicle is not great at all. For that reason, the people who get arrested in the U.S. are people who do stupid stuff in their car (transport guns, transport drugs, get an attitude when stopped, physically touch the officer, etc.
84 of 88 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Of the How To" books, this one may be the most important one that you will every read.
Author Dale C. Carson is a former Florida street cop and FBI agent. He is presently a practicing criminal defense attorney in Jacksonville, Florida. As such, he is in a perfect position to reveal the brutal truth about how police work, their methods, dirty tricks, and motivations. He stresses that cops do not receive promotions or accolades for keeping the peace, or resolving disputes by negotiation, but are evaluated and promoted strictly on the number of citations issued and arrests made, especially felony arrests.
He goes on go to explain how easy it is for *anyone* to get arrested, a subtitle of the book. Most non-criminal "upstanding" citizens" can inadvertently become caught up in the criminal justice "plantation," to use a word coined in the book. Arrest records can have serious consequences, even if the charges are subsequently dismissed, not pressed, or you are acquitted. Such an arrest will doom you (especially young people) to a lifetime of low paid jobs, since many employers will not hire anybody with an arrest record, regardless of the judicial outcome or merit of the arrest. This is particularly dangerous in the age of electronic information, where records can last indefinitely. Before the computer age, written records often got lost with age. Not so now.
So the only practical approach is a defensive/preventive/proactive one. Sadly, most people with not read this book until it is too late, if at all. The "clueless" people, who don't even understand the basics of the system, but are either petty criminals or non-criminals, because in their addition to their lack of ability to keep court dates (they do not own or do not use calendars or alarm clocks), frequently turn minor charges to major ones by failure to appear and other add-on charges. Probably most of them are not even literate enough to understand the simple advice in the book.
This book explains how to keep from being sucked into the system. Once you are, it will be very expensive to get out, if it is possible at all. Numerous parasites in the criminal justice system, including cops, lawyers, prosecutors, jailers, social workers, psychologists, have a big interest in perpetuating the system. The most important battle to be won is for custody of your body - remember, cops are visually oriented predators, whose main motivation is to arrest you and take custody of your body.
Buy this book BEFORE you get sucked into the system, and save a lot of money and heartache. As noted by the author, if you are a real, habitual, or big time criminal, this book will not be of much use to you - you will eventually be residing at the "Graybar Hotel" sooner or later. This book, however, is a must read for the non-criminal, petty criminal, or "victimless" criminal, or just for anybody that is naive about a dangerous, unforgiving system, in which ANYONE can inadvertently be caught up in for a momentary lapse of judgment.
Author Dale C. Carson is a former Florida street cop and FBI agent. He is presently a practicing criminal defense attorney in Jacksonville, Florida. As such, he is in a perfect position to reveal the brutal truth about how police work, their methods, dirty tricks, and motivations. He stresses that cops do not receive promotions or accolades for keeping the peace, or resolving disputes by negotiation, but are evaluated and promoted strictly on the number of citations issued and arrests made, especially felony arrests.
He goes on go to explain how easy it is for *anyone* to get arrested, a subtitle of the book. Most non-criminal "upstanding" citizens" can inadvertently become caught up in the criminal justice "plantation," to use a word coined in the book. Arrest records can have serious consequences, even if the charges are subsequently dismissed, not pressed, or you are acquitted. Such an arrest will doom you (especially young people) to a lifetime of low paid jobs, since many employers will not hire anybody with an arrest record, regardless of the judicial outcome or merit of the arrest. This is particularly dangerous in the age of electronic information, where records can last indefinitely. Before the computer age, written records often got lost with age. Not so now.
So the only practical approach is a defensive/preventive/proactive one. Sadly, most people with not read this book until it is too late, if at all. The "clueless" people, who don't even understand the basics of the system, but are either petty criminals or non-criminals, because in their addition to their lack of ability to keep court dates (they do not own or do not use calendars or alarm clocks), frequently turn minor charges to major ones by failure to appear and other add-on charges. Probably most of them are not even literate enough to understand the simple advice in the book.
This book explains how to keep from being sucked into the system. Once you are, it will be very expensive to get out, if it is possible at all. Numerous parasites in the criminal justice system, including cops, lawyers, prosecutors, jailers, social workers, psychologists, have a big interest in perpetuating the system. The most important battle to be won is for custody of your body - remember, cops are visually oriented predators, whose main motivation is to arrest you and take custody of your body.
Buy this book BEFORE you get sucked into the system, and save a lot of money and heartache. As noted by the author, if you are a real, habitual, or big time criminal, this book will not be of much use to you - you will eventually be residing at the "Graybar Hotel" sooner or later. This book, however, is a must read for the non-criminal, petty criminal, or "victimless" criminal, or just for anybody that is naive about a dangerous, unforgiving system, in which ANYONE can inadvertently be caught up in for a momentary lapse of judgment.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Are you "CLUELESS"?
Unless you are in law enforcement, an attorney or work for judicial system...you are CLUELESS.
This is a good read and this is the kind of common sense knowledge that needs to... Read more
This is a good read and this is the kind of common sense knowledge that needs to... Read more
Published 6 days ago by Dissident
5.0 out of 5 stars
Headline Required
Plus I have to have 16 more words to be able to submit which I am forced to do, they don't like me to just rate the product with 6 stars. What a bunch of bull.
Published 14 days ago by Jay R. Winans
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book
Lots of common sense and a bit of inside info from a retired policeman. This book was worth the time to read.
Published 1 month ago by Jason L. Williams
2.0 out of 5 stars
More bragging than actual info.
The author spends the majority of the bragging about his own career in law and law enforcement. The info he does provide is repeated several times over throughout the book and the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Tyler
2.0 out of 5 stars
10 pages is all that is required for the limited info this book...
Don't be an idiot if you get stopped, don't argue, give minimal information to police officers; that's the book! Common sense!
Published 1 month ago by anonymous
5.0 out of 5 stars
One Funny Book!`
BUT, it is also very serious and valuable.
I'm a retired cop, and this book is right on.
STAY OUT OF JAIL and do it legally!
I'm a retired cop, and this book is right on.
STAY OUT OF JAIL and do it legally!
Published 1 month ago by captureman
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy for yourself and your children
If you live in any sort of metropolitan area, and do not personally know or are related to law enforcement - buy and read this book as soon as possible.
Published 1 month ago by shadowwalker.now
5.0 out of 5 stars
EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW THIS
THIS IS A MUST READ ESPECIALLY IF YOU LIVE IN CA. NY. CHI. AND FLO. WHERE POLICE ABUSE IS RAMPANT. IT MAY HELP KEEP YOU ALIVE OR OUT OF THE JOINT.
Published 1 month ago by Ricardo Garcia
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great practical advice from experienced professional
Carson has seen it all in his long career of law enforcement, and wrote this book to keep you from making stupid mistakes that can ruin your life. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Eric Holloway
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insider secrets of current Criminal system
If you think you have nothing to worry about because you are no kind of criminal - think again!
If you think you have no chance because of poverty, race, neighborhood -... Read more
If you think you have no chance because of poverty, race, neighborhood -... Read more
Published 1 month ago by don ryan
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